Sturgeon’s Law Ninety percent of everything is crap.
Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, “Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That’s because 90% of everything is crud.” Oddly, when Sturgeon’s Law is cited, the final word is almost invariably changed to ‘crap’.
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Donna and I are off to Washington DC from Wednesday afternoon until Friday evening where we have some meetings with a representative of the State Department.
Sounds important, doesn’t it? Its not, it is a vacation of sorts. What it really is, is a lifelong friend of Donna’s has up and joined the U.S. State Department. Next month she is off to Kosovo for a 2-year assignment, so we thought we would fly up for a couple days and visit before she heads off into the uncharted wilds of eastern Europe.
Sally will be working during the day, so our plans are to do some sightseeing Wed afternoon, Thurs & Fri morning. In the evening on Wed & Thurs we will have dinner together. After eating we will probably hang out in some of the trendier spots of Georgetown hob-nobbing with the deal makers. Riiight…more than likely we will head back to the hotel to hang out in the room.
We are staying at the Holiday Inn in Arlington which is right across the Potomac from downtown DC. It is about a block from the Metro station at Rosslyn, so getting in and out of the city should be pretty easy. The room is on the 16th floor facing the city, so in case a terrorist decides to detonate a suitcase nuke in front of the Capitol building we should have a great view — for about a 1/10 of a second.
We were hoping for a mild heat wave, record highs for this time of year in our nation’s capital are middle 70’s, but instead we are getting 10 degrees below normal with a chance of flurries. We are packing turtlenecks instead of shorts…and the sightseeing will consist of poking around inside our nation’s attic (the Smithsonian) or maybe heading over to the White House to see if we can get to see President Bartlett.
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 44
30 p.s.i. in the tire this morning. So I dropped it back to 29 to match the other three and I’ll check it tomorrow.
In Kitchings Mills, SC the odometer rolled by 21,000 as we came home from the airport tonight.
The last two days in DC were the coldest week I’ve experienced since childhood. It was so cold that the mid 50s and dark of South Carolina felt balmy enough that we drove partway home with the top down…
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 46
Wednesday:
Arrive Dulles midday. Wait 1/2 hour in bitter cold, accented by bitting wind for Metrobus. Three bucks each, 3/4 hour later, arrive hotel in Rosslyn section of Arlington. Thaw briefly. Walk 1/2 mile to Iwo Jima Memorial. The regular size canteen holds 1 quart. The one on the monument holds 8 gallons. Passing the Norwegian Carillon (?), we walk 3/4 mile to Arlington National Cemetery. Walk 3/4 mile through Cemetery to Tomb of the Unknowns. Wait 1/4 hour in bitter cold, accented by bitting wind to witness changing of the guard. Walk 1/4 mile to grave site of President Kennedy. Eternal Flame does nothing to ward off bitter cold, accented by bitting wind. Walk 1 mile back to hotel. Thaw completely. In early evening walk 2 blocks to friend’s apartment. Walk 4 more blocks in bitter cold, accented by bitting wind to Red, Hot and Blue a Memphis style BBQ joint. Thaw out while eating ribs. Walk 6 blocks back to hotel. Really long hot shower. Bed.
Thursday:
Breakfast on 17th floor of Holiday Inn. Good view of the city. Good coffee. Bland buffet. Hey, its free. Walk 2 blocks to Metro station in bitter cold, accented by bitting wind. Get off at Union Station and walk to Capitol Building. Giant construction project in front so you can’t get near. Walk around giant construction project. Snap photo of Supreme Court while standing in bitter cold, accented by bitting wind. Duck into National Botanical Gardens to thaw out. Walk behind Capitol, snap picture of group of students gathered to have panoramic photo taken of them. Walk to Smithsonian Air & Space Museum to have lunch and escape the bitter cold, accented by bitting wind. Cross mall to National Gallery of Art. Wander though fabulous sculptures, not really paying attention. Paid attention to exhibit of Ed Ruscha. Walk further down the mall in the bitter cold, accented by bitting wind to the National Museum of American History. Thaw out completely viewing the The Price of Freedom: Americans at War exhibit. Head to Washington Monument. Can’t get close because giant construction project. Tiring of the bitter cold, accented by bitting wind duck into Metro station and return to hotel. After a couple hours in room thaw completely. In early evening walk 2 blocks to friend’s apartment. Walk 6 more blocks in bitter cold, accented by bitting wind to The Mediterranean Cafe. Thaw out while eating kabobs and humus. Walk 8 blocks back to hotel. Really long hot shower. Bed.
Friday:
Breakfast on 17th floor of Holiday Inn. Good view of the city. Good coffee. Bland buffet. Hey, its free. Walk 2 blocks to Metro station in bitter cold, no wind. Yeah. Take three dollar Metro bus to Dulles. Ask about shuttle to National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center at airport. Doesn’t exist. Shuttle is from museum at mall. $12 cab ride from disappointed American Dream immigrant we arrive at center. Bag inspector at the door tells Donna that she must put snacks in her purse back in car. He lets her in after she explains we came via cab. Bag inspector at the door says nothing to Brian while looking through dirty underwear in suitcase. Big Damn Place. Lots of cool stuff to look at. Lots of blurry pictures taken (need tripod next time.) $12 cab ride back to airport. Long wait in crowded, noisy terminal for plane. Gratefully arrive back in small quiet Columbia airport. Real South Carolina BBQ for dinner. Ride part way home with top down.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 47
Our 5 days off from ends tomorrow when it is back to work. To prevent this no work to work letdown from occurring in the future we have purchased a couple of tickets for the PowerBall lottery for Wednesday.
I took 98 pictures in our 2 days in DC. Quite a few are junk, mostly because I hate the nearly useless flash on the camera, so I hand held a lot of the museum shots and they came out blurry (there are only so many leaning on the railing shots a man can take.) There are a few keepers as well. Ever since the digital camera came into our household there are no more prints, to show, to share, to put in albums. I think I will take the 20–24 best photos and get real prints made from them. How 20th century.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 47
I’ve been reading other blogs. Other blogs with writing of substance, filled with words with flair, unlike here. As is the norm with these blogs they like other blogs of the same ilk. Man I wish I wrote like that.
A couple I visited had these really cool rounded corner things going on. So seeing as I can’t write like that, I can at least look like that, right? Style is better than substance, right?
So I did a little google search for “css rounded corners” and poked into all the links that came back on page one. About a half dozen ways to do basically the same thing and everyone of them was kinda understandable, but they seemed just out of my reach. Not that I couldn’t have figured it out with certainty, but the question came down to, “Is this worth the effort?” Nah. Besides once something so cool becomes easily accessible to yucks like me, it is definitely not cool anymore.
But now I’ve gotten the bug to monkey with the look here, this one is getting tired, after all it has had this look for almost a month now…maybe I should do RetroWeb. All gray mottled background with bright lime green bullets. Maybe I’ll do it in one big table. Maybe frames.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 49
Instead of doing anything constructive this evening I’ve plugging away at those rounded corners. Sorry just couldn’t help myself.
sneak peek
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 50
Have you been guilty of looking at others your own age and thinking, “Surely I can’t look that old?”
I was sitting in the waiting room for my first appointment with a new dentist. I noticed his DDS diploma, which bore his full name. Suddenly, I remembered a tall, handsome, dark-haired boy with the same name had been in my high school class some 40-odd years ago. Could he be the same guy that I had a secret crush on, way back then??
Upon seeing him, however, I quickly discarded any such thought. This balding, gray-haired man with the deeply lined face was way too old to have been my classmate. Hmmm,…or could he???
After he examined my teeth, I asked him if he had attended Morgan Park High School. “Yes. Yes, I did. I’m a Mustang,” he gleamed with pride.
“When did you graduate?” I asked.
He answered, “In 1963. Why do you ask?”
“You were in my class!” I exclaimed.
He looked at me closely. Then, that ugly, old, wrinkled son-of-a-bitch asked, “What did you teach?”
These are the names of MT Plug-ins I’ve tried to use on the new blog design without much success. I thought Loop was going to do it, but I’m not to much of a programmer, so I didn’t understand it right. I want to apply different background colors to each post. Loop did that, but it also made 4 different copies of all the posts in each color. Ooops. RoundRobin looked like exactly what I wanted, but the instructions were so sketchy that I’m not sure I got it installed right. Then reading the comments on the plug-in at the author’s site it appears that it doesn’t work with version 3 of Movable Type. Siiigh. FlipFlop looks like it will work on every other post. I’ll take that if I can get it. Plan “B” is to have all the posts one color and then I’ll just hard code the different colors on the sidebar.
I’ve still got 29 psi in the right rear tire. Which begs the question, what caused the original 8 psi air loss last week?
Speaking of Plan “B”, Sally, who we visited in DC last week, may have to implement her own alternative plan. She was all set to go to Pristina, Kosovo (formerly part of Yugoslavia), but there appears to be a major stumbling block. If if can’t be surmounted, she will chuck the 3 weeks of learning the Albanian language and start over with another. She has several choices of assignments, but when you are just starting out in the State Department you don’t get a primo spot right up front, so here are the current places where there are openings she could fill:
Windhoek, Namibia
Kathmandu, Nepal
Conakry, Guniea
Khartoum, Sudan
Amman, Jordan
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Where would you pick?
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 50
I’ve got the layout of the new front page done, using Plan B. But In Mozilla at random times there appears a 1 pixel line underneath one of the rounded corner blocks. Ugh, like having an ink stain at the bottom of your dress shirt pocket. It is not there in IE!?! IE does wrap the Powered by Movable Type 3.121 to two lines, while Firefox fits it all on one. Oh, well, I’m sure the hate is there because I’m not smart enough to figure out just where I went wrong. It is probably simple too…
Begin Update
I got rid of the 1 pixel ink stain. Don’t ask me why, but as soon as I removed one of the links and it didn’t matter which one, it was gone. Nine links, good, ten, bad. Wonder if 11 would be ok?
End Update
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 51
Almost ready to move to the new site design, just a few back end things to take care of, Comment Preview Page, some of my Info Pop-Ups, etc. have to be finished. Maybe tomorrow night.
Tomorrow during the day is the Master’s Miata Club Tech Day and my project/mod for the day is to make the rear side markers working lights. And I’m feeling ambitious I might go ahead and turn them and the fronts into turn signal repeaters.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 53
Well, what do you think? Something is still screwed up with daily archive pages. In the monthly calendar that appears there the daily links all want to lead to a certain date in January that doesn’t exist. The category and monthly archives seem fine. Maybe I should just go back to individual entries as my primary archive and just chuck out the whole daily bit. Then again maybe it is time to export all my entries and do a fresh MT install. That is a lot more work, but what else do I have to do with my life? 
I only did the rear side marker light mod today at tech day. I decided against the blinking side markers because, at least for the rears and maybe the fronts, if you make them turn signal indicators they would lose the parking/running light ability, which is what I really wanted.
Today’s Tech Day could have been called Electrical Tech Day as most of the work done was to the wiring of the cars. I did the side marker thing, 2 folks added air horns and two folks did the power window switch repairs. One member took the discarded stock horn from an’04 with new air horns and added it to their existing stock ’90 to double their noise value for free.
I guess I’ll go add the $8.46 I spent on parts to the BTR Equipment Package list.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 55
Had a little issue with my blog’s database. I successfully exported my entries, so I had a good back-up. I deleted the db and made a new one. While I was at it I uploaded a fresh install of MT. Trouble started when I went to initialize Movable Type. I kept getting a database error. After monkeying with it for about an hour, in frustration I wrote a “help me” post on the MT Support Forums. So far no help. Doesn’t matter as I figured out the problem all on my own. The previous install was set to dynamically publish and to do so meant you had to add a bit of code to your htaccess file. I’m not sure why that code would interfere with creating tables in an SQL database, but when I removed it I could then initialize MT. Now that we are up and running, I’ll go back later and add the code back, so I can dynamically publish again.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 57
A senior citizen in Florida bought a brand new Mercedes convertible. He took off down the road, flooring it to 80 mph and enjoying the wind blowing through what little hair he had left on his head. “This is great,” he thought as he roared on down I-75. He pushed the pedal to the metal even more.
Then he looked in his rear view mirror and saw a highway patrol trooper behind him, blue lights flashing and siren blaring. “I can get away from him with no problem,” thought the man and he tromped on it some more, and flew down the road at over 100 mph. Then 110, 120mph. Then he thought, “What am I doing? I’m too old for this kind of thing.” He pulled over to the side of the road and waited for the trooper to catch up with him.
The trooper pulled in behind the Mercedes, and walked up to the man. “Sir,” he said, looking at his watch. “My shift ends in 30 minutes and today is Friday. If you can give me any reason why you were speeding, that I’ve never heard before, I’ll let you go.”
The man looked at the trooper and said, “Years ago my wife ran off with a Florida State trooper, and I thought you were bringing her back.”
The trooper replied, “Sir, have a nice day!”
A nice clean fresh MT db. Weblogs: 1 | Total Authors: 1 | Total Posts: 2488 | Total Comments: 915.
I finished making the Miata Gallery look like the rest of the site today. For whatever reason when sequentially running thru the large images in Mozilla it will load like half the image and stop. Hit refresh and it displays the whole page, but very annoying.
<UPDATE>
I think I fixed the Mozilla problem. I added the height and width attributes to all the images.
</UPDATE>
Next step, the Post Office Gallery(s).
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 59
In more ways than one. I brought the style of the Post Office Galleries in line with the rest of the site. No need to visit them as there is nothing new there. Hard to believe that it has been about a year since I took any Post Office pictures. I stopped because the site that was the impetus for the pictures never even included any of the 15 pictures I sent them. Wasn’t just me, they never did do any updating at all. I kept at it, but have now run out of day trip Post Offices. Any others would require a more serious commitment. Maybe sometime in the future…
The Mozilla bug that causes partial page loading rears it’s ugly head in the PO Galleries in spite of my making sure the images have size numbers. (It probably isn’t a bug, so much as my ham-fisted coding, but whatever.)
But if you didn’t take yesterday’s hint, go visit the Miata Gallery as I did add 4 new pictures.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 60
Spring better show up here soon or heads are going to roll.  Today was another day where the high temperature did not even get above the average low for this time of year. We are supposed to be at the 70 degree mark for crying out loud.
Smilies. I’ve got them and you don’t. They work on the main page, but I couldn’t get the things to work on the individual post pages. So you see them here, but on any other page you will get the plain ol’ ASCII verson. I couldn’t get them to work on the comment form either and they were supposed to have clickable entry too. I think it is because I use the dynamic publishing feature of MT. 
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 60
The day after his wife disappeared in a kayaking accident, an Anchorage man answered his door to find two grim-faced Alaska State Troopers. “We’re sorry sir, but we have some information about your wife,” said one trooper.
“Tell me! Did you find her?” he shouted.
The troopers looked at each other. One said, “We have some bad news, some good news, and some really great news. Which do you want to hear first?”
Fearing the worst, the ashen faced man said, “Give me the bad news first.”
The trooper said, “I’m sorry to tell you, sir, but this morning we found your wife’s body in Kachemak Bay.”
“Oh my God!” he exclaimed. Swallowing hard, he asked, “What’s the good news?”
The trooper continued, “When we pulled her up, she had 12-twenty-five pound king crabs and 6 good-size Dungeness crabs on her.”
Stunned, he demanded, “If that’s the good news, what’s the great news?”
The trooper said, “We’re going to pull her up again tomorrow.”
After the trip to DC earlier this month I vowed to make actual prints from some of the pictures I took while there. The other night I got as far as uploading the 20 odd good ones to Shutterfly or Ofoto or whoever. Then I had a brainstorm (my wife told me what she wanted) and decided to have one of those MyPublisher books made instead. For about $5 more than the 4 x 6 prints I will get 24 6 x 8 single sided pages of bound paperback book.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 61
My favorite Internet Radio station, Radio Paradise, seems unavailable right now, so I was forced to listen to something else this afternoon. PEELLAND-FM was bookmarked and I didn’t remember why so I tried it. I was instantly transported back to my high school days, they were playing Deep Purple’s “Child of Time” from the album Made in Japan, 12–1/2 minutes of screaming, rambling live rock and roll. This album had a heavy rotation in the 8-track player (that’s right 8-track.) This disc along with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 4-Way Street, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, The Allman Brother’s At Filmore East and, of course, Pink Flyod’s Dark Side of the Moon really define that era for me.
If you are running Mozilla, or your IE is in the right mood, you should notice that I have my very own favicon now. It was made from a picture I used for a Theme Thursday last June, Bend. Here is a place on line that will make one for free, all you need is an image you want to use (a square one would be best.)
FavIcon from Pics
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 61
I hope Peter Frampton isn’t upset. I totally forgot about Frampton Comes Alive being one of my 70s staples too, until I heard a Muzak version of “Show Me The Way” in a restaurant today. Technically that particular album was a few years post high school anyway. Well, you know what they say about marijuana and memory…at least I hope you do, because I seem to have forgotten. 
More fun with the Bend photo — ASCII art!
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NNNNNNNNNNNNBNNNNNNNNNNNNNDBDDDDs=hDDDNNNBNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNBNNNNNBDBDh=(s'-~h(+DBNBNNBNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNBBBDDBBBBBBDD<'.h='-s='~hDBNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNBBBDDDDDDDDDhD=''~<-.'-(~'~hDDBNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
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NNNNNNNNNNBBDDDDDDDDDDDDhDhDhz~<(..-=+~~DBDDBDBBNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNBBDDDDDDDDDDDDDDhDhhhz+-'..''(sDDDDDDDBBNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNBDDDDDDDDDDDDDhhhhhhhhhzh=(.~szhDDDDDDDDDBNNNNNNNNNN
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ASCII-O-Matic
When I first started this re-design I wanted the posts to show up in different color blocks. I tried 3 different MT plugins with no success. Today I googled for a php script that would do a random thing and found a simple one on scriptygoddess that looked promising. And, well, wouldn’t you know it, it worked. I’ve just used it on the front page, the monthly archives and individual pages are still monocolored. So now that I got what I wished for, am I happy? Not sure. Maybe I need to find one that will run through a list instead of random. Maybe I should quit mucking around.
Tonight was (is) West Wing marathon on Bravo. I watched 2.5 episodes before I broke away. While watching that 2–1/2 hours of TV I was subjected to at least 50 promos for other Bravo shows and their new logo is now permanently etched into my head…you know, if I removed the left two roundings and dangled a triangle down and to the left I could have my posts appear in a bravolike box.
Now the question becomes, should the bravo boxes be different colors or not? 
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 62
…that will probably be killed by it’s own popularity in the not to distant future.
In my never ending quest to bring you a blog reading experience that ranks right up there with winning a buck on a lottery scratch-off, I give you Gravatars! That is if have signed up for that service and deem to leave me a comment. When you do, your gravatar will appear right next to your words of wisdom. Mine is made from my image du moment, Bend. What’s yours? Leave a comment and show the world (well, at least this small slice of it.)
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 65
Heee’s baaack! I got one of these via gmail last October and this one came to the mr-miata account. This time it is baseball, not basketball, but it is nearly word for word otherwise. The snail mail addy & phone are the same. Both the phone number and ip address are from Norman, OK. I think, but can’t be sure, the email address is different. Still not sure what this is really about, but if you want in on this email me and I’ll forward you the email…
Hello,
I was browsing through the results from a search engine when I came across your site. It has a lot of good, relevant information and I was hoping that we could exchange links. Doing so would not only help our regular visitors find other useful pages, but it would also make our sites rank higher in search engines like Google, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo. Exchanging links would be free and beneficial for both of our sites.
The site has links at the top of every MLB team page which would give you access to local traffic and out of town visitor going to and from the games.
My web page is over 4 years old and receives more than 2,000 visitors a day. I try to offer the best information available on any topic I think my visitors would appreciate.
If you’d like to exchange links for our mutual benefit, I’d be happy to discuss it with you over email.
Sincerely,
Jeremy
MLBPlayers
2215 West Lindsey
Suite 102
Norman, Ok 73071
4053212922 (please no phone calls)
Like the Cold War before it, the Spam War is a place in which the top minds in the field are battling for world domination while we, the little people, watch in horror and disgust.
We use a spam killer service here at work, called Postini, and it does a very good job of separating the wheat from the chaff. A few slip by, sometimes I can’t see how, but this morning one made it to my in basket and I just had to smile at the ingenuity of it:
This is what the V in Valium is composed of:
A bunch of letters and spaces using the <pre> tag and a small font size, ASCII Art if you will. I might have bought some of those medz if they had enough style to use all Vs to make the letter V and As to make the A and so on…
Messing with the look and feel of this blog isn’t the only thing I can’t leave alone. The Emperor gets it’s fair share of tweaking as well, as evidenced by the 38 changes I’ve made since I took ownership in November ’03. Numbers 39 & 40 are on their way in the form of a spray can full of Garnet Red Mica paint. That can will be used to paint the currently black interior rear view mirror the exterior car color, ala the new Mazdaspeeds. The other mod I have planned to come from that spray can is body colored brake calipers. I did this mod on the old Laguna Blue Miata, but those calipers I painted extrovert yellow, to go with the shiny aftermarket wheels on the bright blue car. This car is a little more subdued, so it will get a more appropriate quieter color on it’s toenails.
I bought the paint from a place called PaintScratch.com (thanks Rick) and it is coming via UPS truck all the way from California. They are charging me $5 for shipping and with the current cost of gas I think I’m getting a bargain.
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 67
Man, I would like to bottle today. Mid 70s, low humidity, 5–10 mph winds and a sprinkling of fluffy white clouds. The pine pollen is still on the trees and the insects aren’t out yet. Bradford Pear trees blooms are still hanging around, the dogwoods are just starting and a couple of the early azaleas are out.
Radio Paradise is hitting all the right musical notes as far as I’m concerned. It is almost enough to make me want so send them a few bucks. Recent play list:
Joseph Arthur — Can’t Exist
Porcupine Tree — Mellotron Scratch
Deus — Sister Dew
Richard Thompson — Turning of the Tide
Patty Griffin — Change
Ian Anderson — Panama Freighter
Nik Kershaw — Wounded
Maria de Barros — Mi Nada Um Ca Tem
Bob Marley — Is this Love
Also, I’m reading a female PI mystery book called In Big Trouble by Laura Lippman that is hitting all the right words. Sample (she is in San Antonio):
“I’ve never had anything like this. Most Mexican food in Baltimore is so…perfunctory. I mean, you know you are in trouble when the best place in town has something called ‘Los Sandichos’ on the menu. And the Mexican place near my house has a wait staff of Estonians. Here, I could make a meal from the tortillas alone. They’re incredible.“
Rick looked puzzled. “They’re flour and lard. You could make them yourself. Anyone could.“
“Theoretically.” She could also solve simple physics equations if she put her mind to it, but that didn’t mean she was going to start anytime soon.
A chunk of the day in the middle was taken up by that pesky work thing, but all in all, very nice.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 67
If something is worth doing, it is worth doing to excess.
A person named Brian commented on one of my pictures in a photo meme. I wrote back thanking him for the comment and it was nice to get to know a fellow blogger named Brian. It reminded me of the webring I was in on way back in 2003 called Blogging Brian’s. The person who formed the ring has fallen off the face of the Internet, so that little scheme can’t be resurected. Instead I went back and grabbed all the still working links and made a little section for them on the right side of the page. Hey I have a list of blogs over there that are written by Miata owners.…
Then I went a step too far. I Googled Brian Blog and then Blog Brian. Came up with 11 more active blogs written by Brians, including six with the startlingly original name of Brian’s Blog.
I am reserving the right to winnow out a few of these, Sturgeon’s Law definitely applies to blogs written by Brians too.
This post was to be brought to you by the letter Q, but fearing legal action from Nissan, it will instead be brought to you by…oh heck, I can’t think of a letter that hasn’t been used as a car line designation. Can You?
1) The picture book of our DC trip I ordered last Friday from MyPublisher arrived today. Never going to buy a photo album again.
2) I must sure love the way I look because I was busy peppering this place with my photo in various forms, favicon, ASCII art and gravatar.
3) Must love that car too, as there are 3 new photos of it in here this week.
4) Posted my first picture in a new weekly photo meme, Lens Day Wednesday. One of the photo blogs I visited actually had a listing of photo memes for every day of the week. Yikes. Think I’ll stick to 3 for now.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 67
 Looking southwest at the corner of Mr. Fletcher’s Ride and an unnamed path about 1/2 mile in from our usual entry point into Hitchcock Woods. Outside the woods, spring is in it’s early stages, but inside it is just starting. The dogwood outside my window at home is is in full bloom, while the one that the passed on this morning’s walk was just starting to flower. I picked this corner in the fall when it was colorful, but there isn’t any thing that will flower heralding spring, so I need to find a different spot that will be more colorful at this time of year for my next yearlong photo essay.
Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to
Problems that upset you, oh.
Jesus Christ Superstar
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 67
Knew that I would make it if I tried.
Then when we retire, we can write the Gospels,
So they’ll still talk about us when we’ve died.
Yesterday evening Donna wanted a nap, so I queued up the DVD of Jesus Christ Superstar and kept the sound down low. I really like this movie. I’m not sure if it just that I’m a child of the early 70’s and that is the style of music of my youth or is it because I saw a Broadway production of the play on a high school field trip and had great time in NYC, in spite of being left behind. Or maybe it is because we get the whole Jesus fable neatly wrapped up in an hour and 45 minutes.
Today on TCM I stumbled on the last 40 minutes of King of Kings and stayed. It was pretty fun to compare this 1961 “serious” take to the more irreverent JCSS telling of the same story.
Well, I’ve gone and done it again. Last year after taking this photo I told myself I would get a nicer picture this year. Trouble is that after the blooms disappear I can’t tell a Bradford pear tree from any other tree, so figuring out a photo spot way in advance can’t be done. This year when the trees started blooming I kept my eye out as I drove for a row of them with a nice enough background. Never saw one I really liked, so I never did take a new picture. The Bradfords are all starting to go green now and wouldn’t you know it, I think I stumbled on a place that fits the bill. Note to self: for blooming Bradford pear trees picture, try entrance road to Aiken Regional Medical Center.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 68
…and probably for only a little while, I am making good on this threat.
Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 70
Continue reading Only Because I Can…
This week is flying by!
A spray can of Garnet Red paint was on my doorstep after work tonight. Now let’s see if I can remove the mirror from the windsheild without breaking either one. At least two of the half dozen threads I read on Miata.net mentioned breaking the windsheild. 
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 71
The Bravo-esque entry blocks are gone. Back to good ol’ rounded corners on all four. I think the look was kind of cute and reserve the right to use it somewhere at a future date. Maybe for comments…
I’m drawing a blank for for today’s Lens Day word of “Diversity.” Plus tomorrow’s theme for the Thursday Challenge is “Food” and I don’t know what I’ll use for it either (and I’ve known about it since last Thursday.) I can see hundreds of food photographs, but none I think I can do justice to nor any I want to shoot.
Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 73
Two cowboys are out on the range talking about their favorite sex positions.
One says, “I think I enjoy the rodeo position the best.”
“I don’t think I have ever heard of that one”, says the other cowboy. “What is it?”
“Well, it’s where you get your girlfriend down on all fours and you mount her from behind, and you reach around and cup each of her breasts in your hands, and then you whisper in her ear, ‘These feel just a little smaller than your sister’s’ … then you try to hold on for eight seconds.”
Rspeed has produced some new “vintage” wheels called Chaparral 15s that looked like a winner, until they weighed them, 15.5 pounds. Hard to want to add 2 more pounds of unsprung weight back onto each corner. To top it off they also don’t directly clear the larger brakes on the 2001+ Miatas. It can be done, but you have to add a 3 mm spacer behind the wheels. Too bad as they would look killer on the car. For comparison, first the OEM wheels:
Now the Chaparrals in black with a polished lip:
We made it to work this morning with the top down, but put it up because there was an 80% chance of rain. They were 100% right, it started around 10 and rained most of the day. At 4 o’clock when we left it had stopped. We got in the car and dropped the top for the drive home. Halfway out of the parking lot the rained started back up, so as we crept towards the exit I put it back up. It was a nice try…
Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 76
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